The Thief
by skywalker05
Summary: In her hand, her bounty and her downfall threatened to crumble between her fingers, so she gripped it more tightly and ran, hoping she could get further out, maybe even to the Gap, before the unborn Ghosts started speaking to her again. Oneshot?


The Traveler hung over the city, bearing down on its own shadow. From here the buildings looked tiny, snappable. On what day would the Tower look like Old Earth?

Wash leaned on his bad leg and thought about reflections. Shifted the pulse rifle on his opposite hip into a more comfortable position and limped toward the Speaker and his gyroscope tower.

Tower North was humid with puddles and plants, although it hadn't rained since Wash had woken up. Maybe he simply noticed the cool, wet air more because he was moving slowly. Guardians ran in the opposite direction, clatter and cape, like the tailing ends of fleeing armies, while frames looked up with pinpoint eyes before returning to their sweeping or silent, shamed contemplation.

Wash always tried to find eyes on the Speaker's face. One day they were the tiny slits in his mask, the next the deep black fissures beside them. "You asked for me?"

"The Light calls some of us."

The Speaker did not miss Wash's glance down at his leg. The Hive prince had cut him almost all the way through the thigh.

"You should be healed soon. Correct?" The Speaker said.

"No. They say the weapon was infused with the Darkness. I've gone to healers, physicians, and cyberneticists, Speaker. They all say I should stay here."

"Should is not imperative."

"I'll fight if it comes to me, but can't move toward it very fast. It's been hard enough in the Crucible."

"You prevail in that."

"Yes. We're supposed to keep training."

"It will keep you strong." The Seeker looked up, inclining his bleached-bone mask toward the creaking curves and baubles above. The books around him smelled of paper rot and hot machinery. "My job for you won't take you far from the Tower. And there will be others to help."

"I'll do it."

The Speaker turned toward his desk. "A Guardian has fled the Tower. She carries what may be blueprints for the Ghosts. No one else has been able to crack one open, as blasphemous as the idea may be."

Wash had indeed been taken aback.

"We must return the blueprints to my collection and her Light to the Tower. Convince her to return. Guardians killing our own would be a grim thing."

"Of course. I mean, of course not-"

The Seeker lifted up a brown piece of parchment and showed Wash the picture inked on the page. "Find her."

Wash inclined his head. The turning of the astrolabe sounded like the wind at the edge of the tower. "But I must ask, sir. It looks like she doesn't have a Ghost."

"Some losses are felt throughout the order."

Mine wasn't, Wash thought. His Ghost was gone, lost with his mobility. Sometimes he had thought that he had placed it between him and the prince on purpose, in an effort to shield himself with what tiny mystery they possessed. His Ghost hadn't even bothered to leave him blueprints for another, although after many bloody revivals it surely had known the blueprints of him.

"It must be that the one she communed with was destroyed, its Light faded."

"But how?" Was she like him?

"I do not know. But she can be found below the Tower. Her fellow Hunters seek her, but you have the advantage in that she is not familiar with you. The journey will not be long." The Speaker raised a hand in his padded coat. "You don't need to be swift if you do not stop."

Wash sighed, nodded. The cryptic answers frustrated him. The Speaker twisted everything to sound like gospel. Commander Zavala would have been both simpler, more tactical, and more cruel.

"I am the Traveler's servant," Wash said.

The Speaker said, "Good luck."

His staring silence was a gentle dismissal, and Wash limped back the way he had come. His steps would have automatically taken him toward the hangar if he had had the strength to run, but instead deliberation overrode instinct, and he moved down corridors less familiar and even more damp than Tower North, heading for the descent.

* * *

><p>Brown shadows on brown walls on brown armor. The Traveler darkened the sky under white clouds painted with blue and silver reflections. Connie had never been more thankful that she didn't wear bulky Titan armor. Out here, her Hunter's cloak looked like any other utilitarian garment, the fieldweave underneath invisible to the shoppers and talkers in the Traveler's shadow. Here, close to the root of the Tower, the City streets were tangled but well lit. She should probably leave them soon.<p>

She was a Hunter who kept to Hunters, wary of the factioning in which she comfortably participated. In her hand, her bounty and her downfall threatened to crumble between her fingers, so she gripped it more tightly and ran, hoping she could get further out, maybe even to the Gap, before the unborn Ghosts started speaking to her again, telling her to choose a new faction and a new name.

Making her think that she could never go back to the Tower she loved.


End file.
